THE LITTLE REVIEW Literature Drama Music Art MARGARET C. ANDERSON EDITOR SEPTEMBER, 1915 Reversals The Editor Moods: Ben Hecht Sorrow Humoresque Rain An Invitation to Cheat Posterity My Island Soul-Sleep and Modern Novels Will Levington Comfort Poems: Maxwell Bodenheim Pastels Thoughts A Woman in the Park Richard Aldington’s Poetry Amy Lowell Café Sketches Arthur Davison Ficke Emma Goldman on Trial Louise Bryant Poetry versus Imagism Huntly Carter The New Idol George Burman Foster Book Discussion The Poets’ Translation Series The Reader Critic Published Monthly 15 cents a copy MARGARET C. ANDERSON, Publisher Fine Arts Building CHICAGO $1.50 a year Entered as second-class matter at Postoffice, Chicago THE LITTLE REVIEW Vol. II. SEPTEMBER, 1915 No. 6. Copyright, 1915, by Margaret C. Anderson Reversals MARGARET C. ANDERSON Now I see the secret of the making of the best persons. It is to grow in the open air, and to eat and sleep with the earth.—_Whitman._ What do you call the place you live in? * * * * * I will describe it to you. Perhaps you can find a new name for it. It is a place where men do not hold up their heads and look free. Where men dare not seek what they were born for: life. Where many men work and starve, and many work and turn into cabbages, and many steal and turn into rats, and a few own the land and turn into hogs. Where nature is not as important as law. Where law is cause rather than effect. Where religion is faith rather than affirmation. Where love is never as strong as things. Where age is decay rather than more life. Where art is encouraged but not recognized. Where revolt is the strongest of emotions and the weakest of actions. * * * * * What do you call this strange place where it is immoral to take life deeply, and moral to be a half-thing? Where it is beautiful to have theories of living, and ugly to apply them. Where it is right to dabble and wrong to realize. Where ignorance is a virtue and knowledge a crime.